


Full Stops and Exclamation Marks

by ZoeBug



Category: Ghostbusters (2016), Ghostbusters - All Media Types
Genre: (courtesy of Holtzmann), (sort of), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Dimension Travel, Gen, Gratuitous Witty Batter, Grief/Mourning, Haunting, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Cuddling, Post events of the movie - taking into account the canon divergence, Rescue Missions, Scientific Practice of Magic, Supernatural Elements, Team Feels, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-08-09 17:37:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7811080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeBug/pseuds/ZoeBug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“And what’s the good news?” Erin manages. Her voice is very soft and a little choked. It’s possible she hasn’t breathed properly in days.</em>
</p><p><em>"I, uh...” Holtzmann licks her lips. "I might have an idea of how to get Abby back.”</em> </p><p>In a world where Abby Yates was a casualty of The Battle of Times Square, the remaining gang mourn her loss and try to pick up the pieces after failing to rescue Abby from the closing portal in time.</p><p>But when strange happenings begin to occur at the fire station, it starts to seem as if the Ghostbusters are being haunted themselves. Is it their missing teammate attempting to contact them? Or are things more complicated than they seem?</p><p>Erin, Holtzmann, and Patty hatch a plan to bring Abby back home. (Without letting anything else back through with her.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1 (The Calm)

**Author's Note:**

> When I went to see Ghostbusters for the first time this AU immediately popped into my head and I was just so enchanted with the characters and the quirkiness of the whole reboot universe I had to write this. (Holtzmann is definitely my wife and is one of the most fun characters I've ever written.)
> 
> I haven't written a lot of horror in my day so shout out to my friend avoidingavoidance who is one of the most fantastic horror writers I know whose style definitely creeps me out and inspired many of the sections in this fic.
> 
> Enjoy!

_Shadows settle on the place that you left_

_Our minds are troubled by the emptiness_  

                    "Youth" - Daughter

 

* * *

   
“Ha _ha_!” Holtzmann’s whoop of triumph is enough to startle Erin from her work.

Fingers hovering in the air above her keyboard, Eren tilts her head upward to the second floor of the building to where the shout had originated.

“You got somethin’, Holtzy?” Patty calls from elsewhere on the first floor.

It was something Erin had considered a perk when they’d first moved their operation into the old fire station: the fact they could easily hear each other from almost anywhere in the building without shouting too loudly

A way to keep each other close and the loneliness at arm's length.

It had quickly become apparent, however, that this feature was a double edged sword as that meant that any of Holtzmann’s mumbling as she worked or un-self-conscious boisterous singing was _more_ than easily heard from the first floor.

Erin had tried relocating her desk to various areas of the first floor― _study_ she’d attempted to get both Patty and Holtzmann to refer to her area of books and maps and computers as, to no avail―but the painted brick material of the walls caused all her efforts to make little difference.

Erin had instead invested in heavy-duty earmuffs that the saleswoman had told her were designed for hunters using firearms whose sound could potentially damage eardrums.

Erin had replied immediately that she’d take them.

The reason she hears Holtzmann’s victory cry on this particular day could be attributed to Patty, who had borrowed them to test out some new gadget in the alleyway behind the building and had yet to return them. Again.

“Ladies and ladies, please secure your belongings and place your trays in the upright position, we are prepared for take off!” Holtzmann hollers down from the second floor.

The words send a thrill through Erin’s chest, something exhilarating and terrifying. Hanging past the peak of a roller coaster’s hill just before the gravity kicks in.

This might be it. After all these months, they might finally have found a way.

“Erin!” Holtzmann’s legs are slotted through the railing bars and she’s kicking her feet, swinging them where they hang over the edge of the second story. One of her sandals flips off at the motion and clatters to the floor below.

Erin watches the sandal land in the open center of the first floor of the fire station and, past it across the wide room, she sees Patty jogging up the opposite stairs excitedly.

“Yoo-hoo! Erin Gillllber- _t_!” At reaching Erin’s name, Holtzmann abruptly lowers her voice to a resonating opera-singer-like intonation to draw out Erin’s name, annunciating the “t” with such specific attention that it ends up coming out as more of a dramatic “tah” sound.

Erin looks back up at Holtzmann who seems either unphased by or to have not even registered the loss of her shoe.

Her grin is broad and crooked and she has a smear of something that looks like grease along one of her cheekbones. Then again, perhaps it could be barbecue sauce, Erin muses.

“Huh?” Erin replies, a little distantly, still distracted by the unidentified smudge on Holtzman’s cheek.

Holtzmann, still grinning, just knocks her gloved knuckles against her temple and tilts her head to the side.

“Anybody home up there? I said I think I got it up and running!” She rolls the “r” of running unnecessarily. “Wanna come see?”

Maybe dirt, Erin considers as she squints up at Holtzmann.

“Yes! Yes, I’ll be right up!” Erin replies. That shaky feeling is still quivering in Erin’s chest and low in her stomach as she stands and locks her computer screen.

Kevin, over near the door at his own small desk, swivels in his office chair. The swivel is in the wrong direction at first, which he seems to realize as he changes direction. Eventually he finds some way to face in Erin's direction, who is tucking a large journal full of scrawled notes under her arm.

“Can I come?” Kevin asks with his usual Golden Retriever earnestness. Erin steps out from behind her desk and sighs in a mixture of exasperation and fondness.

“No, no, Kevin, remember we talked about this? You have to stay _at the desk_ when you’re at work.”

Kevin’s eyes light up with recognition, his grin widening. 

“Oh, right! Except for bathroom breaks,” he says the statement with the intonation of long repetition.

Erin nods at him, her smile the kind one might give a child one wanted to encourage when they present their absolutely horrendous clay project from art class.

“Exactly. Good job, Kevin.”

Kevin beams, proud of himself.

“Thanks, boss!” He turns back to his computer. But instead of just continuing the remaining 90͒ in order to face his computer, however, he swings his chair the entire 270͒ back the way he’d originally turned.

With a vague sense of horrified amazement, Erin continues to watch as Kevin jabs at his computer screen with his finger and makes the clicking sound of the computer mouse with his tongue.

Erin crosses to the stairs, shaking her head, and climbs up to the second floor. The sounds of whirring machines and beeping indicators and a fuzzy radio playing oldies grow louder as she ascends.

Patty is already there, standing in front of one of the many plastic- and metal-strewn tables scattered across the room. She’s bent over some piles of wires and clamps and shining silver metal that Holtzmann is gesturing at wildly.

“...zapped me like a friggin’ swarm of hornets at first, because I thought the electromagnetic current didn’t run through the main radius of the-” Holtzmann cuts off her explanation when she spots Erin approaching, turning with one side of her mouth stretching in a sideways grin.

Her eyes are manic and bright as she reaches up to free one arm of her goggle-glasses from her right ear, leaving them to dangle precariously from her left alone.

“I was informed there was revolutionary science at work up here, is that right?” Erin inquires as she approached the table.

“Dunno about that,” Patty replies, smiling herself, “but whatever this thing Holtzy’s got rigged up looks impressive as hell.”

Holtzmann doesn’t reply. She simply circles one arm in front of herself dramatically before throwing the other out away from herself and bowing so low Erin doesn’t quite comprehend how her glasses stay hanging from her ear.

Erin comes forward to join Patty (biting back a laugh) and Holtzmann (still folded in her dramatic bow) beside the table.

The device in question―if Erin were assuming that all things connected to each other on the table were part of said device―fan out from its center like a slayed spider with far too many legs.

In the middle sits a large metal bowl that looks like one that might connect to an electric mixer. It’s filled a little over halfway with a dark, opaque liquid. Connected to the rim of the bowl in several places are clamps that look suspiciously like the ends of jumper cables which snake outward to large black boxes with knobs and readouts, as well as industrial battery units and a few of their neon detection devices.

_Abby’s_ neon detection devices.

Something inside Erin aches with a fierceness that steals her breath away.

“So… what does it do?” Erin asks slowly. “And how is it different from last time?

And does it work this time, Erin thinks. It _has_ to work this time.

Holtzmann snaps her torso upright, the loose frizzed curls of her hair whipping into her face at the sudden movement. She runs her tongue along the front of her teeth.

“Distinguished members of the peerage!” Holtzmann says with an old moneyed Southern accent like that of a rich Kentucky socialite. “I present to you a fully functioning scrying bowl.”

“Shut _up_!” Patty exclaims delightedly, eyes wide as she stares at the device. Erin stares as well. "You serious?!"

“Well,” Holtzmann amends, slouching back against the table as she leans more of her weight on her braced forearms and elbows. Her head is tipped backward, looking up to the ceiling as she speaks. “I may have been a bit hasty on the ‘fully functioning” part as that is yet unconfirmed. But it is, indeed, a scrying bowl.”

“Those things for witches right?” Patty asks, still eyeing the device with impressed appreciation.

“I mean… yes, I know the history about them but this...” says Erin, frowning. "It's _magic_. It's not real."

“Yeah, yeah.” Patty continues as if Erin hadn’t spoken. Her face is alight with recognition. “Witches used ‘em to see the future or things goin’ on other places. Reflective stuff like mirrors and water helped a witch send her soul out explorin’ on the other side or-” Patty pauses, gesturing with her hands as she tries to find words to explain, “-sorta more like exploring the space between the sides? Right?”

“Exactamundo.” Holtzmann, still slumped backwards against the table, agrees to the ceiling before popping her lips. “Ten points to Grrrryffindor.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Erin says, closing her eyes for a moment and holding her hands toward them with palms out. “This is all fine in theory. And in a world where _magic_ is a viable resource to draw on but...” She shakes her head. “It doesn't exist. It's all just superstitious explanations for natural phenomena.”

Patty looks sideways at Holtzmann and shrugs, considering.

“She got a point.”

Holtzmann pushes herself up off the table but doesn’t make any move to right her head along with the rest of her body. Her head hangs back on her shoulders as she heaves a sigh and then rolls her head, neck loose, toward Erin with a bland expression.

“You know what else was just superstition, _Dr_. Gilbert?” Holtzmann deadpans. “Ghosts. That is, until you start calling them-” Holtzmann’s voice shoots up into a tinny, high register that Erin assumes is supposed to be a mocking imitation of her own voice but, in actuality, sounds absolutely nothing like her, “- a Class 4 identifiable semi-corporeal apparition with manifestations of physical spatio-temporal alterations in the surrounding environment and a registered electromagnetic reading of-’”

Erin cuts her off.

“Okay! Okay, I get it!”

Holtzmann grins, righting her head on her shoulders, and winks.

“So…” Patty starts, looking between the two of them, “what’s _really_ happenin’ here?”

“Magic, souls, all that stuff?” Holtzmann turns back to face the device and flicks a switch on one of the black boxes connected by wires to the bowl. It squeals life with the electronic oscillation of a radio searching for a station before fading to a low hum as Holtzmann continues. “‘s real. It’s just all _energy_. Electricity, electromagnetic currents…”

Erin’s eyes widen as she watches Holtzmann turn on another device.

“Whoa…” Patty laughs through the word. “You serious?”

Holtzmann nods the jerky nod she performs where she draws her chin into her neck when she’s pleased with herself or excited to explain something.

“You’re joking…” Erin whispers, incredulous. Excitement is tingling in her fingertips. “How’s it work?"

This feeling―it's the thrill of a breakthrough, of discovery, of understanding the workings of the universe one fraction of a degree more; the primal satisfaction of seeing a puzzle piece fit into place.

“Everything is energy.” Holtzmann repeats, continuing to circle around the table, turning things on or fiddling with dials or screwing in connector cables. “Everything from physics of motion to the manifestation of ghosts. And specifically with life-” Holtzmann pauses in her motions to flash them both a smirk, “and non-life, the energy they work with is predominantly electricity. Any information with which we perceive the world is all transmitted through electricity. Our eyes, our ears, our nerves… they convert everything they experience into nifty little packets of electric-data that they send to our brain for us to understand.”

“Our brains speak the language of electricity.” Erin murmurs, nodding furiously.

“Horrifically over-poetic, but correct.” Holtzmann acknowledges. “And since we’re living on what is essentially a spiritual powerline-”

“The ley lines?” Erin asks, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “But I thought they were dangerous. I mean, look at what happened-”

Erin cuts herself off abruptly and silence floods into the space between the three of them. The quiet moment hangs, thick and discomforting, ringing with the words Erin hadn’t said.

_Look at what happened to Abby_.

Erin feels like she is hanging on here by a thread. Everything is so fragile these days: happiness, peace, a day not clouded with the suffocating grief and desperation. Erin herself not least of all among the listings. Some days she'd even move herself to the very top.

Erin finally coughs to clear her throat of the lump that had been forming in order to continue. But Patty is the next to speak, cautious and contemplative.

“I think the deal with usin’ ley lines is that they aren’t all good or bad. Just powerful, right? Depends on who’s usin’ them and for what.”

“Correctamundo once again." Holtzmann agrees, but the playful tone doesn’t seem to be reflected in her eyes when Erin glances at her. “Better up your game, Erin, she’s mopping the floor with you.”

Patty and Holtzmann high five while Erin rolls her eyes and just like that, the moment has passed.

The happiness and the grief alike. All so very fragile.

“I wasn’t aware there was going to be a quiz.” Erin mutters petulantly. “Could you guys just get back to the point?”

“Right.” Patty nods. “So, ley lines are powerful and I’m guessin’ by what Holtzy’s been sayin’ that their energy is probably some kinda electricity too. Some kind we could tap into.”

“Electromagnetic, to be exact.” Holtzmann corrects lightly, waving a hand as if the difference isn’t all too important. “Half credit. Go on.”

“Right. And we know that the ley lines are connected to the other side or wherever it is Rowan brought all the ghoulies from. Which…” Patty pauses, squaring her shoulders as if bracing herself. “Which is where Abby is.”

There is another moment, shorter this time, where Holtzmann ducks her head a little lower over the equipment on the table and Patty clenches her jaw and Erin looks down at her hands clasping each other where they hang in front of her.

Then Holtzmann lets out a hacking, overly spit-filled cough that startles both Erin and Patty before picking up the conversation and forging ahead.

“The theory is, if we can plug into the mainframe or whatever _―_ connect ourselves electrically to the ley line _―_ we’ll be able to… well, not exactly _see and hear_ the other side or the in-between, but it’ll seem that way to us because our tiny feeble human brains will interpret the electrical signals that way.”

“That’s…” The word leaves Patty’s mouth with an impressed exhale. “That’s…”

“Yeah.” Erin agrees.

“So.” Holtzmann says with a dramatic twirl and flick of a switch which causes the entire maze of wires and boxes centered on the bowl of dark liquid to begin thrumming with energy. She turns on them with a manic grin, her goggles placed firmly back over her eyes and her arms spread wide. “The only question now is which of us is gonna be the one to take the red pill.”

 

* * *

  
_Three Months Earlier_

 

Erin’s world is nothing but adrenaline and desperation and fear.

There is nothing but the sweat sliding down the back of her neck and the ache in her arms and shoulders from the heavy equipment. There is nothing but the sulfur and iron smell of manifested spirits and the thick choking scent of burning cars.

There is nothing but the dust of falling and settling rubble, nothing but the furious blinking of eyes against their burning and watering.

Erin’s world is nothing but the skipping record player of her thoughts, nothing but _please, please, please work_. There is nothing but the blurring rush of split-second reflexes and the blinding glare of spirit light too _close-_

There is nothing but the sudden crushing weight on her legs, the pain a wedge being hammered into Erin’s mind so large that it pushes out her comprehension of language, her ability to process sight, the knowledge of her own name-

She is nothing _but_ the pain for a moment that could be a second or an hour, blind and deaf and dumb to the world that has become nothing around her. And then there is her name. And then someone else’s.

There is red light in her world of pain and pain alone and then her vision begins to clear; cutting through the wispy teals of the spirit lights the red blazes a searing path. The words follow their lead, cutting through the pain and the sideways slipping and there is nothing but _it’s working, it’s working!_

And then the name comes again―shouted, _screamed―_ and her world becomes a _nightmare_.

Everything that had come before this, every terrifying moment, every second she had met death’s gaze as it stared at her through the eyes of something that knew it’s true horror and she hadn’t looked away… had been the most pleasant and restful of dreams compare to _this_. Compared to the nightmare of this world right here, right now, with that high pitched, desperate, terrified scream and the horrified choked yelp of Abby’s name… there was nothing that could have been worse.

And then it was.

Because the aborted, instinctual jerk of her body towards that sound drives the wedge of pain deeper into her again. And then the world is her pained yell and the red fading from the blur of her vision and then the sound of the energy vortex beginning to fade and the grating, _devastating_ sound of concrete grinding itself back along the road’s surface...

And Erin’s world is nothing but pain and fading and _no… no, no, no no nononono-!_ And nothing but _not Abby, not Abby,_ please _not Abby-!_

And suddenly Erin’s world is nothing but ringing silence and shock and a singular inhale shuddering past her lips…

And then there are more of them, a dozen all at once, nothing but the far-away ragged heaving of her breathing―too short, too quick, gasping; _the term is ‘hyperventilation,’ Erin_ , her mind supplies distantly―and the colors of the pavement and the hotel unlit by the supernatural green of the spirits or the red of the vortex swimming and blurring before her, and _not Abby, not Abby-!_

And then Erin’s world is nothing but black.

 

* * *

 

_Two Months and Three Weeks Previous_

  
For the first week, nobody says her name.

Not Erin, childhood friend and confidant, co-writer and co-conspirator. Not Holtzmann, right-hand woman and faithful companion. Not Patty, fellow level-head and encourager.

Their days are full of work and study fueled more by the desperation for distraction than passionate enthusiasm. Their conversations are cautious, subdued things full of halting stops and trailed off sentences. The fire station which, before, had seemed open and spacious, so full of possibilities, now feels too large. Too empty.

Every sound of life is amplified, echoing in the vacant space, slowly fading and settling once more into silence. Even the bangs and clatters and sparks from the second floor aren’t followed by whoops or joyous shouts as they once were.

Kevin forgets things about operating the phones that he had begun to remember how to do. Patty stops voicing ridiculously specific historical facts about the buildings they investigate. Erin stops giggling when Kevin smiles at her _―_ stops laughing, period. Holtzmann doesn’t touch the upstairs radio.

Abby’s absence (Disappearance? Death?) hangs over them like a fog, thick and chilly and obscuring.

Erin feels distant from the others; they are fuzzy and far away, voices muffled and reaching her as if through water.

She blames herself for it. Because she was caught under the rubble, because if she was there she would have- she _could have-_

The stillness makes it worse.

Her right leg in the cast and the clunky crutches― _it could have been worse, be grateful; it could have been worse, why didn’t you just_ **_get up_** _?!―_ keep her stationary for long periods of time with nothing but her notes and the memories and the quiet shuffling of the other two women somewhere nearby.

And the guilt.

Erin never says anything, but they know she blames herself. They never say anything either, but Erin knows they also blame themselves.

She feels like she is wandering in circles, endlessly looping through this fog.

_All my fault. All my fault. Could’ve saved her. All my fault._

They all wander around the too-large building with too-quiet footsteps. Gliding past each other quiet and solitary in their misery, they have become ghosts themselves, haunting a future that was supposed to be.

It’s nearly a week of this. Nothing but too empty spaces and muffling fog and Abby’s name ringing in the quiet spaces where no one says it for days.

It’s nearly a week until the heavy silence of the fire station is broken by Holtzmann sliding down the fireman’s pole, banging against it loudly with a length of pipe.

It’s _loud;_  a firecracker in a graveyard.

Holtzmann’s progress is slow, filled with jolting halts every few inches. The ragged cut-off jean shorts don’t reach far enough down Holtzmann’s legs to keep her bare thighs from catching enough friction against the metal to stall her descent.

She’s got her goggles in place, flyaways curling around her face in a halo of rebellious golden strands and she carries with her the smell of singed clothing and a series of ear-splitting, repetitive clangs.

Taking advantage of the slowness of her progress, Holtzmann is using the opportunity to heft a segment of pipe above her head and bang it continuously against the fireman’s pole in a loud, clanging rhythm of metal on metal and shouting.

“Family meeting, kiddos! Everybody in the living room!”

“Holtzmann!” Erin exclaims to be heard over the banging. It occurs to her that the sound of her voice sounds irregularly loud to her own ears; she doesn’t remember the last time she spoke above a murmur. She coughs against the feeling.

Holtzmann isn’t exactly smiling. But her face isn’t set in the distant, uncomfortable expression she’s worn for the past week and some of the fog shifts before Erin; the world seems to inch a little closer. Holtzmann looks closer, at least. But pale. Her cheeks are still a little sunken, skin still ashen.

If Erin had any humor left in her hollowed out chest, she might have told Holtzmann she looks as if she’d seen a ghost.

“What the hell, Holtzy!” Patty has appeared from her office _―_ she and Holtzmann _do_ call it her _office_ as she asks _―_ with a hand to her chest, staring at Holtzman still banging away about two feet from the floor on the pole. “You scared the hell outta me!”

“Whoops!” Holtzmann shouts, still banging the pipe against the pole above her as her feet finally touch the linoleum of the first floor.

“Can you stop that?” Erin implores, hands still over her ears. “We’re all here! You got our attention.”

Holtzmann pauses, still not-quite-smiling at Erin. Without breaking their gaze, Holtzmann bangs once more before swinging the pipe to rest across her shoulders behind her head in that easy, cocky, just a hair over-the-top stance that looks so natural on someone like Holtzmann.

“Awesome. I love it when a plan comes together.”

There are dark circles beneath Holtzmann’s eyes―dark enough to be seen even through the yellow-tint of her goggles―and they're markedly different from those she usually sports from manic-inspiration fueled 72-hour inventing binges.

Erin’s seen ones identical under her own eyes in the brief seconds she could bear to look into a mirror.

“What the hell’s so important you gotta get a noise complaint filed on our asses?” Patty demands, coming to a stop in front of Holtzmann. Holtzmann blows a loud raspberry, flyaway hairs fluttering and spit flying. Patty steps back.

“Oh, please.” Holtzmann rolls her eyes, dismissive. “If someone was gonna file a noise complaint, they’d’ve done it already. Have you _heard_ the amount of shit I blow up?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Patty says with a heavy inflection. “And so has half this damn neighborhood.”

“Only half?” Holtzmann sticks out her lower lip in a pout. "I gotta up my game."

“Holtzmann, what’s up? What do you need to tell us?” Erin asks. Her heart is beating too fast and her palms are sweaty.

Holtzmann stills. Her eyes dart away from any contact with either of them in the they do when she is nervous or unsure.

“I got good news and bad news. Well, it’s not really bad news. Good news and creepy, scary news.”

“What is it?” Erin asks cautiously.

“Tell us the bad news first. Or creepy, scary,” Patty says. “Whatever.”

Holtzmann just nods. She still doesn’t look at them.

When she speaks her voice is quiet. It is halting and uncomfortable, her inexperienced stick-shift driver of an explanation.

It's the one she backs into when all attempts at cloaking her discomfort with humor fail, when she has no defense left through which to filter her interactions.

“I- uh, I saw- saw Abby. Upstairs.” There’s the briefest moment, the smallest faltering hitch where Holtzmann seems to be fighting herself to continue, before she does. Erin can’t breathe. “The mirror- the bathroom, mirror in the bathroom. She- I guess- her hand was, it was pressed, uh, pressed to the glass and-” Holtzmann glances down to her shoes, then back to the wall, her movements as jerky as her voice. Her knuckles, Erin notices, are very white where she grips the pipe still in her hand. “I couldn’t- I didn’t, uh, hear- hear it, but… but she was- uhm, she was screaming.”

Neither Patty nor Erin say a word as Holtzmann speaks. They just stare, shocked into silence, eyes growing wider and wider with the progression of information.

The world around Erin is spinning. The sound of Holtzmann’s voice saying “Abby” is echoing in Erin’s head the way it would if spoken into a large cathedral _―_ reverberating between walls and stone. Growing more distorted as it goes, the original voice and meaning become more and more lost in the maze of open space.

Holtzmann swallows, loud in the sudden silence.

Her boot squeaks against the linoleum as she grinds the toe of the sole against the floor. Letting out a long breath, she finally looks up and flicks her gaze between Erin and Patty.

“And what’s the good news?” Erin manages. Her voice is very soft and a little choked. It’s possible she hasn’t breathed properly in days.

“I, uh...” Holtzmann licks her lips. “I think there might be a chance we can get Abby back.”

 

* * *

 

_Two Months Previous_

  
Holtzmann spends a full weekend rigging up a pulley system that allows them to clean the huge, grimy windows that stretch just short of ceiling to floor on both stories.

Erin wasn’t aware the fire station contained so many colors until after the sunlight could make its way inside without obstruction.

They start saying Abby’s name again.

Things aren’t back to normal, but they’re better.

Holtzmann still has those circles under her eyes and Patty will still abruptly stop in the middle of a joke cracked for someone with Abby’s specific type of humor and Erin still has a hard time getting herself to look in mirrors.

But they’re working again. Better than that, they’re working _together_ again.

They aren’t separate spirits haunting the same space, no longer caught in the blinders of their singular grief.

Holtzmann will drag Patty out to the alley behind the building with a manic grin and a pile of metal and wires and Erin will trot worriedly after with the requisite safety equipment.

They still always hurry back inside, though, to apply the newly found gadget to their theories or make adjustments.

Patty will return to Erin with maps of Central Park or the subway system that Erin hadn’t realized were missing from her desk ( _study!_ ) and walk her through the alignment of Erin’s data markings with never-officially-recorded neighborhood oral histories or the sites of strange historical incidents.

But they still don’t break halfway through to order dinner, though. And they never order Chinese.

Erin will sit up on the second floor and pour over old data readings and city maps while Holtzmann tinkers or adjusts, occasionally asking questions or throwing out ideas or requesting for someone to hold something there for a minute while it gets welded.

They still never turn on the radio, though. And they never suggest sandwiches.

In the fervor and desperation with which the three of them grasp on to this new purpose, goal, _direction_ , it takes them a couple of weeks to realize that using their old equipment isn’t getting them anywhere.

After endless tinkering by Holtzmann, brainstorming by Erin and Patty, and precarious testing also by Erin and Patty, Patty flops down onto the couch one afternoon with a frustrated sigh.

“Of course it’s not workin’,” Patty mumbles. Erin follows Patty into the Living/Rec Room they have set up in a side space off the first floor. She makes it there with only the barest hint of a hobble; her legs are nearly back to normal, the doctors are assuring her. She tumbles bonelessly onto the couch, noting the matching scorch marks along both her and Patty’s forearms from previous testing.

“Why do you say that?” Erin asks, too tired to move her head to look at Patty as she does so and too sore to move anything else.

“I mean, think about it.” Beside her, Patty sounds absolutely exhausted. “All the stuff we usin’, Holtzy cooked up to find and catch ghosts that are already here. If we tryin’ to talk to the other side and get somebody _back_ from it, how are those gonna help?”

Erin sits bolt upright, various muscles and joints protesting the motion. She barely registers the pain. Patty looks up at her with the ‘You Alright, Crazy?’ Look she often gives to Erin (admittedly, because Erin warrants said look often) without moving her neck from the top-most cushion of the couch.

“ _Patty_!” Erin whispers with quiet awe. “Oh my God, you’re a genius!”

The Look only increases in severity as Erin stands, eyes wide.

“You didn’t start mackin’ on the radioactive stuff again, did you?” Patty asks, one eyebrow much higher than the other. Erin doesn’t reply, just raises her hands to the top of her head, mind whirling a hundred miles a minute with ideas and plans and questions.

“Patty, you’re a _genius_!” she exclaims once more darting from the room, Patty calling after her. Erin doesn’t realize until she’s halfway up the stairs that she’s grinning from ear to ear.

“What the _hell_? Holtzy, we got a Code 9! I think Erin’s finally lost it!”

 

* * *

 

_One Month Earlier_

  
They start noticing it about a week after the first attempt to contact the other side _―_ to cross the bridge, to see past the veil. They call it lots of things over the course of their planning and experimentation.

It’s a little after two in the morning and Patty is helping Erin carry some of the maps and old city ledgers they had been going over together back to Erin’s desk ( _study!_ ) They’re both giddy with exhaustion and the satisfaction that comes with the definitive feeling of progression and so at first, when they both see it, neither acknowledges anything.

I’m just tired; it's just dark, they both think separately but simultaneously.

But then it happens again and Erin stops just short of where the shadows of the overhanging second story cuts a dark line across the floor. It looks to Erin like some dark shore, the shadows lapping up over the light in soft waves.

“Patty?” Erin asks softly.

Beside her, Patty has stopped too.

There’s a sudden low throb of pain that starts up in Erin’s nearly-healed right leg, pulsing like a heartbeat, like the ripples of an echo as sound spreads outward through air.

“Yeah?”

Their voices are barely more than whispers, small and cautious things in the vast shadowy cavern of the fire station.

“Please tell me that shadow isn’t moving.”

Beside her, she can hear Patty swallow thickly before she responds.

“I don’t think you get how much I wish I could do that.”

Erin can’t tear her eyes away from it.

A section of the clean, straight line of the shadow before them is arching outwards, then swooping inwards, bubbling and undulating like something moving beneath the fabric of a blanket.

Erin’s breath freezes in her chest.

“Holtzy?” Patty calls up to the second floor but doesn't quite coax her voice into raising above her normal speaking volume. It comes out breathless and a bit hoarse. “Is that you? You better not be messin’ with us.”

There is no reply from the second story. Only the quiet and the dark.

The absolute silence of the shadow’s continued movement makes it all the more unnerving.

The rippling line of the darkness suddenly shoots outwards, further than ever before, a tall, long arc of blackness reaching toward their feet. It’s the negative of a candle flame flaring high and thin above its wick, trembling with fury.

Erin trips back a startled, involuntary step and a half. She lets out a terrified gasp that is all breath and no voice.

Because the shadow freezes that way, stock still _―_ the straight, normal, natural line of it interrupted by this jagged space of darkness arcing outward from its source with nothing to cast it.

And the sudden stillness unnerves Erin down to her very bones. The books tremble in her arms where she is gripping them with white knuckles, all sense of exhaustion burned off by the sickeningly sudden terror.

“Tell me you know what the hell that is.” Erin can hear how obviously Patty is attempting her usual playfully put-upon tone. Erin's not sure whether its for her sake or Patty's own but either way it comes out more as a wavering plea.

“I don’t think you get,” Erin heaves out; she feels like there is no air in her lungs, “how much I wish I could do that.”

It crawls, slides, creeps down the center of Erin’s back: the terror. Ice cold and prickling. Her ears are ringing with the silence.

The protrusion shudders, flickers on the ground. One instant it is a curving arc and the next, the black outline of a hand in a flurry of motion. It is scrabbling, clawing, its fingers twitching and gasping along the floor for purchase.

Both Patty and Erin reel backwards, the shadow hand curved into a tensed claw against the floor.

It heaves, invisible nails scraping against the linoleum and Erin’s heart seizes within her at the sight, the understanding.

“It’s trying to drag itself _out_ -” Erin chokes, her voice strangled by fear. Her ribcage feels too small to hold her breath, her heart too large and beating too rapidly for her chest. Surely she will _explode_ -

And then, just like that, it’s gone.

With a blink, the smooth and perfect line of the second story edge’s shadow is back to normal: straight and uninterrupted. Still.

“Is…” Erin croaks. “Is it gone?”

“I sure as hell hope so,” Patty whispers. Erin nods.

In her reply, though, Erin hears the answer they both immediately understand. And fear.

_For now._

 

* * *

  
_Two Weeks Earlier_

 

“Hey, can I ask you two your professional opinions?”

It's a Thursday afternoon.

Kevin has gone home early, as is becoming something of habit. Erin would consider docking his pay to reflect it if she didn’t understand this was Kevin’s way of dealing with his inability to help in any of their efforts to follow the leads on Abby.

Hell, Erin has a Ph.D. and she’s feeling pretty damn useless at the moment. As much as it seems Kevin is the poster boy for ‘ignorance is bliss,’ Erin would bet her entire collection of floral print bow-ties that he’s just as affected as the rest of them.

Erin and Patty have their notes sprawled widely across the sturdy long table that Erin has claimed as part of her desk ( _study!_ ) and are pouring over the library’s worth of information.

They’d decided it would be helpful to cross reference any locations they had recorded high EMF with the backlog of murder sites throughout the city, which is what the two are in the middle of when they hear Holtzmann’s voice calling down to them from the second story.

Erin looks up from her notes to meet Patty’s eyes across the table, mouth pausing mid-chew. Patty, on her part, has a half eaten piece of pizza hovering in the air in front of her open mouth.

It’s the timbre of Holtzmann’s voice that gives them pause _―_ distant and distracted. Patty quirks an eyebrow at Erin.

“Well, I don't think Erin has anything _besides_ professional opinions!” Patty calls back up.

Erin glares and resumes chewing derisively. Holtzmann’s consequent laugh is high and strained.

“Oh. Good.”

It's strange, Erin thinks, to hear Holtzmann sound so… confused? Concerned?

_Scared_.

The word comes to her freezing and brittle―a thin sheet of ice. It creeps out over Holtzmann's words and her attempts at humor, fragile fingers of frost encroaching on every attempt at warming humor.

“I was just wondering if you guys knew whether bleeding was a thing this wall did regularly or…”

There is another brief moment of eye contact in which Erin swallows thickly and Patty drops the remainder of her pizza slice back down onto the plate.

With a rapid scrape of chairs and echoing smack of footsteps on linoleum, they are hurdling up the stairs to Holtzmann’s workshop.

As they reach the second story, both panting lightly, the both still when they spot Holtzmann with her back to them and standing very, very still. She is staring at the large blank brick wall at the back of her workshop which does, in fact, seem to be bleeding.

Beads of dark red viscous liquid are oozing out of the painted brick surface and spilling over, running down in stark rivulets. The streams meet and bleed into each other like rainwater running down a window, cutting intricate zigzagging paths that stand out sickeningly dark against the white of the wall.

“Oh.” The sound escapes Erin in a puff of surprised breath.

“So,” Holtzmann murmurs quietly at Erin’s reaction. It’s that same distracted voice as before. _Scared_ , Erin thinks again, “not typical wall behavior then.”

“Oh, hell no,” Patty breathes. “You know how hard it's gonna be to get blood out of a carpet like that?”

“Do you know if Tide makes anything specifically for ghost-wall blood?” Holtzmann asks, gaze still glued to the wall. Her eyes track the slow, glittering path of the slowly dripping blood.

“Last time I checked it was Arm ‘n’ Hammer that had that kinda stuff,” Patty quips back.

It’s quiet in the workshop aside from a few of Holtzmann’s machines whirring and the muted _plip...plip...plip_ as drops of blood make it to the floor below.

“Enough witty banter!” Erin snaps. “Holtzmann when did this start?”

“But our witty banter is what secures our position as lovable public idols.”

Erin purses her lips even though she knows Holtzmann can't see it with her gaze still trained forward.

But Erin understands from the tone of her voice and the unnatural stillness of her body how much the sight before them truly unnerves Holtzmann. She’s not quite sure whether it’s because of this she’s letting the comment go, or whether it’s because Holtzmann isn’t the only one unnerved here.

Holtzmann finally addresses her original question after a beat.

“Only a few minutes ago, I think. I’m basing that on the amount of blood that’s pooled on the floor, though. Can’t be completely sure. I only noticed it when I looked up from soldering.”

Erin takes a step toward the wall and the bright red crisscrossing patterns are mesmerizing. She finds her arm rising from her side without entirely meaning to do so.

She takes another two steps.

“Erin!” Patty hisses. “What the hell? Are you crazy?!”

“It’s okay.” Erin breathes the words as she inches forward to the wall. It feels as if her arm is floating. Her fingers twitch in the air before her.

She’s close enough to _smell_ it. The blood. It’s sharp and metallic and it makes her gut twist.

Erin Gilbert’s area of expertise is the dead, not the dying. She isn't used to this much blood.

She pauses. Her hand is outstretched and hovering only a few inches from the wall. And from the thin streams of blood running down it.

Up this close it’s even more dizzying, so much more _real_ than it had looked back beside Patty and Holtzmann. Her stomach surges at the realization that she can feel the _heat_ coming off it. That it’s _warm_.

“Oh, God.” Erin’s words are raspy and muted with horror.

“Erin?” Holtzmann’s voice is nervous but very far away. “Erin? You okay?”

Erin can’t look away, can barely force herself to blink to clear the burning at the edges of her vision from the dryness. When she does blink, the patterns cut across the white of the wall by the deep, visceral red are burned into the backs of her eyelids.

Ghostly afterimages of gore and fear.

There’s a sound in Erin’s ear, a low deep rhythm. A surging wave of _what-is-that_ crashes through her, the terrifying gap in knowledge looming within her.

_My heartbeat_ , she attempts to supply. Her mind is long trained to scramble for answers, for logic, to patch the gaping, horrifying holes in the universe.

But, no. That’s not it.

She can feel her own pulse pounding much faster and lighter in her neck. A rabbit’s heartbeat, fluttering and small and terrified. Her own heart is racing with adrenaline, her own blood surging through her as if spurred into action by the sight of blood flowing so freely outside of a body before it.

Patty’s words come to her seemingly over a vast distance. They reach Erin slow and distorted, as if through water.

“Should we…? She’s not gonna _touch_ it, is she?”

Erin hears Holtzmann’s voice respond but the sound frays and crackles around the edges. She’s not listening anyway.

The deep thumping heartbeat that is not her own is growing louder in her ears.

_Ba-bum. Ba-bum_. _Ba-bum_.

_Come here_. It seems to beckon. _Come touch_.

Indistinct whispers press in around her, just on the edge of intelligible. A jostling crowd of subdued voices shuffling together just beyond the thundering heartbeat.

It’s so loud now that Erin thinks it might be inside her head; her vision shakes in time with each shuddering pound. She can see the blood before her now, how it pulses with the same rhythm.

_Come here. Come here._

From somewhere very far away she feels a hand on her shoulder, Holtzmann or Patty maybe. But it doesn't matter, the tugging is inconsequential. It's a minuscule whisper of an itch she can't find it in herself to pay attention to at the moment.

The rivulets of blood continue to drip steadily down the wall. Streams combine and divide in small branches, carving vertical veins of hot, metallic blood like the bared wrist of some giant beast.

_Ba-bum. Ba-bum_. _Come here. Come here._

_Ba-bum._

_Come touch_.

Erin leans forward and presses her hand to the brick.

All sound flickers out of the world.

It's so sudden it's as if a switch has been flipped―one moment sound and the next... silence. It's true silence, _absolute_ silence, nothing but a high pitched ringing and the feeling something pressing in on her ears.

Her vision flashes _blinding_ white and out of the ringing silence there burns a pulse. Of sound, of pressure, of energy, she doesn’t quite know.

All Erin _does_ know is the feeling of it, a pulse so deep she feels it in the roots of her teeth as it washes outwards in a wave.

The blood that a moment ago was dripping with disconcertingly thick slowness has now frozen in place. It clings to the wall, vertical and unnatural, paused there as if time has stopped.

And the next second―or the same second, Erin doesn’t witness it moving―it's changed, flickered like the changing of an animation frame. Suddenly, all the liquid has flickered into being again, painting a large ring to encircle her palm pressed against the brick. It's spattered outwards from the clean, perfect inner edge of the circle as if from the center of a blast zone.

“ _Erin?_ ”

There is a voice, whispering directly into her head amidst the all-consuming, ringing silence. And she _knows_ that voice, has _always_ known that voice, ever since she was a child.

But Erin is a passenger in her own body, unable to move or turn or speak.

She has the strange certainty without quite understanding how she knows it that no time is passing. This moment is somehow dilating, stretching with her caught in the center like her hand in the center of the ring of blood.

“ _Erin! Erin, it’s starting again!”_

The world is suddenly shattering around her.

Erin is flung backward as the force of the pulsing wave of energy finally registers in her body, as whatever moment she was locked into and whatever force was locking her into it finally releases its hold on her.

With the hyper-clarity of adrenaline and terror, she realizes as she careens backward that she can hear again. Her ears are still ringing but there are sounds happening around her, a whole chaotic _cacophony_ of them. Holtzmann’s startled cry and Patty’s yell. The sound of alarms going off. The sound of windows _shattering_.

Erin is thrown backwards away from the wall, landing in a crumpled heap with a sickening _smack_ that she hears before she feels.

The world goes shadowy. And then dark.

Behind her eyes she sees blood and veins and hears Abby’s voice yelling for Erin to save her beyond the the thundering pulse of a heartbeat not her own...

And then nothing at all.

 

* * *

 

_One Day Earlier_

 

“You’re _sure_ it was her.”

Erin irritably blows a stray lock of hair from her face in response.

“You look like a horse when you do that,” Holtzmann states with an unconcerned monotone from across the table. Her feet are propped up on the table and a bag of chips is cradled in her lap.

Holtzmann turns to meet Erin's irritated gaze and widens her eyes with exaggerated drama. Holding eye contact, she brings a chip to her mouth and takes an obnoxious bite, loud and messy, without looking away or dropping the wide-eyed scandalized expression.

Crumbs tumble down onto Holtzmann’s chest as she chews and continues staring.

“Thanks for that.” Erin's reply is too sharp and too bitter. “And _yes_ , Patty. For the last time, I'm sure.”

The side of Patty’s mouth twitches down another millimeter, a journey it has been incrementally but continuously making throughout the entirety of the conversation so far.

Holtzmann persists in crunching loudly across the table.

“I just have to ask,” Patty assuages, lifting her hands up in a gesture half defensive and half conceding. “You could’a heard it wrong with all that spooky blood shit goin’ on.”

“Yeah. But I didn't.” Erin knows she sounds harsh and venomous even as the words leave her.

The line of Patty’s mouth continues its downward path by another tick.

But Erin is tired and frustrated and she misses Abby in a way that aches sharply up under her ribs and she just wants her friend back home.

Groaning, Erin slides forward to rest her forehead onto her folded arms atop the table before her.

“Sorry,” Erin laments, trying to keep the edge from her words. They're a little muffled against her forearm. “Sorry, Patty. I just…”

Erin trails off with a sigh.

“I know, baby,” Patty relents and it is warm and fond regardless. Erin doesn't deserve these two.

After the incident with the bleeding wall, they'd sent Kevin on extended vacation for his own safety. Yet, with just the three of them, some of the worrisome emptiness has begun to seep back into the open spaces of the fire station.

And without Abby here the balance is so skewed between them. They're some sort of strange three-sided seesaw, rapidly oscillating from seething annoyance to overflowing appreciation to festering self-loathing.

The puzzle-piece click of the four of them has been fragmented. And sometimes Erin finds herself feeling as far from the other two as Abby is from her.

This is why she needs Abby back.

This is why she needs Abby, period.

Erin doesn't know how to be part of this family yet without Abby to secure her in her place, to keep her from fading backwards into the fog of safety. Or solitude. The two have so often been the same thing for Erin that she is still learning how to separate them from each other.

“We _have_ been cross-examining you for a weeks about it.” Holtzmann relents through a mouthful of more chips. “If it were me I'd be sick of it by now too.”

Erin rolls her head sideways so she can see Patty and Holtzmann with her cheek still pillowed by her arms.

Patty leans back in her chair and lets out a heavy breath.

“So,” she starts softly, “I guess she's really there.” Holtzmann has stopped crunching. Erin watches as she tips her chair back, heavy boots squeaking as they shift to push against the table's edge.

Tipped precariously, Holtzmann then leans her head backward, giving the illusion she's defying physics in some way by not tumbling backward to the floor. With her chin tipped up and back, the wispy strands of blonde rebelling from Holtzmann's attempt to pin them back are nearly brushing the floor.

“ _Erin. Erin, it’s starting again_ ,” Holtzmann quotes. It's Erin’s oft repeated report of what she'd heard that day with her palm against the wall and Abby’s voice in her head.

Holtzmann speaks the phrase slowly, weighing each word on her tongue as if they were not words but something visceral, something tangible.

It's strange to hear the words repeated by Holtzmann with such slow, calm consideration, separated so entirely from their original begged and desperate context.

“What’d she mean, you think? What’s startin’ again?” Patty asks, soft. Holtzmann just lets out a long breath.

“I don’t know, Patty,” Erin replies, just as softly. “Whatever it is it doesn’t sound good. But it doesn’t change the fact that we still have to help her.”

They're all quiet for a moment.

The only sound between them is the distant noises of the city beyond the wall of the fire station and the creaking of Holtzmann’s chair beneath her weight as she shifts in it softly but precariously.

This is how Holtzmann does most of her thinking, Erin knows. Softly, but precariously.

“What if we can't get her back?”

It's uncharacteristically plain, the way Holtzmann asks it, unfiltered through humor or strange vocal pitches.

“Holtzmann.” Patty’s eyes are closed, mouth pressed into a thin line. The name is a simultaneously a reprimand and a plea.

“We're getting her back.” Erin looks up at Holtzmann, chin still resting on her folded arms. She hopes the other two can't hear the graveyard recklessness that worms its way out past her lips with her voice.

“Never said we weren't.” Holtzmann drops her boot from its place holding her chair tipped back and it flies forward with a loud _bang_ as it slams upright.

“Sounded that way.”

Holtzmann scoffs.

It's full of just too much phlegm to be normal for anyone other than Holtzmann but somehow that little eccentricity has something fond and bright surging in Erin's chest. It's a hand around her wrist with nothing but a long drop beneath her feet.

Erin might not know how to be part of this family yet, but that doesn't mean she doesn't long for it with the unconscious yearning of a plant toward sunlight.

“It's not like we're just gonna sit around and do nothing. We’re gonna do _something_ about it, right?”

“"Something” as in…?” Patty prompts a little sharply. “You got any bright ideas, Einstein, you best share with the class.”

Holtzmann’s raised eyebrow is more of a twitch than anything else.

“Why ask me?” Holtzmann flings one arm into the air in an extravagant gesture. “Ask Erin. She knows the theory. I just built shit.”

Erin sits up at the mention of her name.

Patty gives Holtzmann a last withering look before turning to Erin. And the look on her face, on Holtzmann's face across from her, is so full of _expectation_ , of _hope_.

That grip on Erin's wrist feels like it's slipping.

This is why she needs Abby back.

This is why she needs Abby, period.

Their puzzle-piece click has been fractured and Erin is so overwhelmingly unequipped to put them all back together again.

Holtzmann is the one who is good at connecting physical things together in an order that makes them work. She is good at turning scattered pieces into something whole. Patty is good at piecing fragments of lives and behavior and knowledge of the flawed nature of people together until they make a cohesive story. She is good a turning scattered pieces into something whole.

But Erin...? Erin's domain has always been to watch, to document, to report, to study. Never to change.

Erin was never gifted the knowledge of that coveted talent to change the shape of life around her until it fit together in a better shape. She's at a loss for even where to _start_ piecing together the fragments of this little family back together.

“I...” Erin starts and even to her own ears it sounds lost. Small and hollow.

The realization punches through her with all the violent shock of a stab that Abby isn't their only missing piece.

That they have all been shattered for months now.

That unless they can somehow figure out a way to pull Abby back from beyond the veil, their disparate pieces will fray and fray and fray until their edges no longer fit the way they once did.

A kind of dizzying, desperate fear is rising through Erin, bubbles in a glass streaming upwards, bursting behind her eyes in tiny sparks. She needs to think of _something_ but she can't form thoughts, can't _breathe-_!

One of the thick, leather bound books seems to fling itself off the edge of the table furthest from them, hurdling to the floor where it lands with a clatter. The book slides for a moment, a slow hiss of sound, before finally stilling.

It doesn't move and neither do any of them.

Erin stares at the book, lying motionless nearly a hundred feet from them across the cavernous ground floor. She finds herself firmly back in her own body, yanked from the dizzying spiral of terror by the shock of it.

She looks from the book, to the place it had been sitting just a second ago, well out of arm's reach.

“Is it happenin’ again?” Patty whispers, still not moving. Any hint of the previous creeping animosity has vanished from her voice.

Erin doesn't reply, just continues glancing back and forth between the book and the table.

“Abby?” Holtzmann is the one to finally call out into the quiet stillness.

There is no response.

“Abby?” Erin tries, Holtzmann’s bravery buoying her up above her own leaden fear. “Are you there?”

Then, out of the silence, comes a single faint knock against the wood of the table.

None of their hands had moved.

The sound echoes in the sprawling openness of the fire station’s first floor.

Erin stands up from her chair _very slowly_. Each drag of the chair's legs across the floor, each creak of wood and cracking of her own joints sends zings of fear shooting into her fingertips.

Erin Gilbert is a split being herself when the tiny family she'd finally managed to find for herself is torn into pieces. Part of her heart is here, beating in her chest in time to Holtzmann's crooked smiles and Patty's full-body, joyous laughter.

And yet another part is reaching, reaching, reaching toward the place she cannot find a path to.

She doesn't realize until she's standing before the book that Holtzmann and Patty have followed her, not content to let her venture forward alone again. The idea stills some of the tremors in Erin's hands when she crouches down to examine the volume.

“I just want to see what it is,” Erin explains softly as Patty makes a soft sound of fear at Erin's motion.

“If it eats your hand, you owe me ten bucks,” Holtzmann whispers.

Erin tilts her head sideways to examining the dusty old tome.

It's leather-bound, faded and worn with yellowing pages warped into curvy waves by damp and heat. The title on the spine is faded from use and age so Erin has to lean down even further, squinting to make out the words.

“ _Mirror Magik,_ ” Erin reads with her head craned nearly horizontal.

The moment she speaks the words, the book flings itself open, the front cover thwacking loudly against the linoleum where it lands.

Erin topples backward off the balls of her feet at the sudden movement, throwing her hands backward to catch her. They smack loudly against the unforgiving hardness of the floor.

“Erin!” Patty is there beside her in an instant, hand around her upper arm. “You alright?”

“Holy fuck.” Holtzmann's words are half laugh, half air.

Erin is staring down past her shoes to the book, lying motionless once more only now with cover thrown back and pages splayed open to them.

Patty helps Erin to her feet as Holtzmann takes a few steps forward to gaze down to the open book.

“What's it open to?” Erin rasps as Patty helps her steady herself.

“ _Chapter Twenty,_ ” Holtzmann reads, her head tilted sideways to read as she gazes down at the ancient volume. “ _The Art of Scrying_. Holy shit...”

Holtzmann swears with a breathless, incredulous laugh.

“What do you mean _scrying_?” Erin asks. Her hands are still stinging from their impact against the floor. Holtzmann looks away from the book and up to meet Erin's inquiring gaze.

There's something bright and fierce sparking to life behind Holtzmann's eyes, spreading like wildfire from her pupils to her fingertips. It seems to light her up from the inside.

Holtzmann reaches up to the goggles resting securely atop her head and lowers them into place over her eyes. The elastic band snaps definitively as she does so.

Soft but precarious.

Holtzmann stands there with her goggles in place, one hand in her pocket and lips pulling into a dangerous smirk.

She is positively _lit up,_ burning and glorious in her inspiration.

“Might wanna get find some earplugs, chaps. I’m gonna be up _all_ night and I can guarantee there will be at _least_ three explosives involved.”

 

* * *

 

_Now_

 

“This is absolutely _nuts_ ,” Patty says for probably around the twelfth time. By Erin’s count, at least. Holtzmann is currently about an inch from Erin’s face as she loops a strap under Erin’s chin in order to secure whatever the contraption is she’d placed on Erin’s head.

She can feel it whirring lightly against her scalp.

Holtzmann still has that unidentified smear of something across her cheek and Erin focuses her gaze on it while Holtzmann continues to adjust something behind her ear. She mentally reminds herself to ask what it is if she survives this.

“And what is _this_ part for, exactly?” Erin asks Holtzmann, trying to catch a glimpse of Patty out of the corner of her eyes on account of Holtzmann’s fiddling rendering her unable to move her head.

“This baby translates those electrical signals,” Holtzmann replies smugly, patting the contraption with fondness, “into something your brain can actually use.”

Erin takes a steadying breath and swallows as she feels Holtzmann attach the cool, smooth plastic of electric nodes to her forehead.

“To see and hear.”

“Exact- _lay_ ,” Holtzmann confirms, drawing out the last syllable with an additional twangy scoop. “Can’t guarantee exactly what it’ll be like since-” she pauses mid-sentence to snort and twirls sideways away from Erin to a nearby table “-you know, never personally contacted the other side.”

“Like I said,” Patty repeats from the wall she’s leaning against, arms crossed. “ _N_ _uts_.”

Holtzmann tips her chin down against her chest and smirks over at Patty.

“You know it.”

After another fifteen minutes and endless shaky requests for equipment run down repetitions, Erin is standing before the bowl of dark liquid covered in electrodes, a lead-lined vest with wires snaking out from every possible inch, and some kind of plastic plate complete with embedded computer chips slid into the soles of her shoes.

“You’ll do great.” Holtzmann’s voice is low and quiet beside her ear, gloved hands heavy and comforting on Erin’s shoulder for the moment. “I’m gonna be here monitoring the equipment the whole time.”

Erin nods, eyes closed. She thinks about Abby. About the panicked plea she'd heard in her head. About the way she’d last seen Abby: bloodied and battle-worn, illuminated in the neon and ghostlight of Times Square.

She thinks about the way Abby’s face has of always lighting up with excitement or ideas, about the way her laugh would probably fill even the cavernous first floor of the fire station. She thinks about how, maybe, if they manage to get Abby back with them Erin can stop feeling like she is losing her grip on how to be a part of this family.

“Okay,” she breathes.

“Atta girl.” Holtzmann claps her on the back. She retreats to a computer monitor, leaving Erin standing alone with only her reflection staring back up at her from the bowl of liquid. It looks pale and distant on the slightly shivering surface of the liquid.

“You got this, baby!” Patty calls from behind her. Erin lets out a high, disbelieving exhale, suddenly again struck by how _grateful_ she is to have this family still with her. No matter how much she feels she has been fraying around the edges.

“Opening circuits to the scrying bowl,” Holtzmann announces loudly and in front of Erin the rim of the metal bowl throws off a few sparks, a low hum droning into existence. “Connecting Erin's bio-electrical feedback data to the monitoring system.”

Erin can feel the equipment resting across her torso and on her skull whir to life.

“You can do this,” Erin mutters to herself under her breath. “You can _do_ this.”

“And patching in the electromagnetic flow from the ley line in three!”

Erin closes her eyes. She inhales slowly and deeply. She thinks about Abby.

She thinks about this small, fragile, utterly improbable and miraculous family she has been allowed to have. About how much she is willing to do and to give in order to be allowed to keep it.

“Two!”

She breathes out.

“ _One!_ ”

She opens her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos always appreciated!  
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	2. Part 2 (The Approach)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because maybe all their efforts hadn’t been in vain, maybe everything Erin’s ever known and loved isn’t slowly fading from the world after all and-
> 
> " _It’s too_ dangerous _, don’t you understand? Once you open a door, anyone can walk through it._ ”
> 
> The words send something icy slithering down Erin’s spine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am _soooooo_ sorry for the long wait! I'm in my last year of undergraduate and because two of my classes are writing-related, a lot of my creative energy is being sucked up by things I'm writing for class, I'm really sorry.
> 
> Because I felt so bad, I decided to split up the next part of the story into two, so I would be able to post the next bit and you guys wouldn't have to wait for 80 million years for me to finish the final part. So yeah, there are now going to be three chapters total. 
> 
> Don't know when exactly I'll be able to get to finishing it but hopefully not _too_ long. 99% of the time I finish things I start, don't worry, especially when they've gotten such amazing reception like this has. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this next bit!

_Full stops and exclamation marks_

_My heart stops moving before I start_

_How far can you send emotions?_

_Can this bridge cross the ocean?_

             "In For The Kill" by La Roux

* * *

 

The world around Erin is constructed of dissolving fog.

Looking around, she recognizes the shape and layout of the familiar space. It's the second floor of the fire station. There are the tables and Holtzmann’s tool racks and the staircase and the poles leading down to the ground floor.

But everything―the walls, the furniture―is insubstantial, dark and swirling gray. The edges of things drift away in dark and curling plumes like smoke from fire.

Erin looks down and sees that her own hands held out before her, although still the same color, have taken on a similar consistency. Misty light peach-colored wisps drift from her hands like steam blown from the top of a hot mug or the exhale of cigarette smoke. She is the barely spun strands of cotton candy still forming in this strange place.

“Abby?” She calls the word and it seems to frizz into the air before her, disintegrating around the edges in the same way as the room around her. Taking a cautious step, Erin turns around and calls out once more. “Abby! Are you here?”

There is no distinct reply, only the far-off sounds that seem to permeate the background of this strange place. There are echoing fragments of whispers, too soft and too distorted to form real words.

Erin takes another step, and then another, until she is peering down over the railing at the shadowy echo of the fire station's first floor which is stretching out before her.

But there's nothing. Only whispers and smoke and unease.

“Abby!” She calls again.

“ _Erin_.”

Erin whirls around and a sharp sort of pain crackles, jagged and shooting, behind her eyes at the movement. It blinds her temporarily, the fountain of bright little sparks suddenly swarming her vision and she stumbles backwards a few steps.

Somewhere she hears a sharp exclamation of shock. It is far off, like an echo across a canyon.

Blinking rapidly, Erin tries to clear her vision. Out of nowhere, what she assumes must be the second floor railing is then pressing against her back, steadying. It’s a strange sensation, like something felt through multiple layers of clothing.

Because she's not _actually_ here, she remembers. Reminds herself.

The sparks begin to fade and the room slowly reappears, ghostly and made of curling smoke. But Erin is focused on the shape now slowly growing clearer before her as her sight refocuses.

“A-Abby?” she croaks. Her words still sound as if they’re reaching her ears from outside of her rather than originating from within her chest. “Is that-?”

“ _Erin, shh!_ ”

And there Abby is before her.

She exists with the same drifting, swirling quality as the rest of this strange world, and she’s close, only about a foot away from Erin. Her hand is circled around Erin’s wrist. Erin realizes the railing hadn’t been the only thing to steady her from her backwards stumble. Abby’s hand is much more  _grey_ than her own, more washed out than the bright peach of Erin’s arm beneath it.

Erin lets out a desperate, half-sob of a sound in relief.

“I-It’s you, it’s _really you_! Abby- Abby, oh my God, you’re really here!”

“ _Erin, listen to me. Yes, it’s really me, but you have to be_ quiet _here, do you understand?_ ”

Erin takes a deep breath and nods. Abby retracts her hand.

There’s something about the way the edges of her form swirl and dissipate that makes Abby hard to look at directly for too long. It feels to Erin like her mind is straining itself trying to accurately decipher what is there before it.

Abby looks over her shoulder and stills for a moment.

“Is this-?” Erin hisses, looking around herself as well. “Are we really... Is this really-?”

“ _The other side of the portal, yes,_ ” Abby replies and turns back to Erin. She shakes her head in disbelief and the sight makes Erin dizzy momentarily. “ _I wasn’t expecting_ this. _How the hell did you get here?_ ”

And Erin’s heart swells suddenly with such warmth that her chest aches.

Because _here she is_. Here Abby is before her. Even if she is mostly smoke and Erin is having a hard time looking directly at her, she is _here_ and she is looking at Erin with an incredulous astonishment that Erin has missed with the ferocity of a burning star.

“How do you think?” Erin replies, unable to fight down her grin. “Holtzmann, obviously.”

“ _Obviously,_ ” Abby says and the word is a fond exhale, the second-cousin to a laugh. “ _I should have known better than to underestimate you three_.”

“Abby- Abby, when I heard you, when you spoke to us back on the other side,” Erin starts, “you said “ _it’s starting again_.” What’s starting again? What were you trying to warn us about?”

Abby blows out a long breath.

“ _Things are-Things are strange here, Erin. I- I wasn’t even sure if the messages were making it to you-_ ”

“The hauntings! Yes, that’s what I’m talking about,” Erin begins to nod emphatically. “We got them, alright. But it took us a while figure out that they were from _you_.”

Abby looks away from Erin and off to her right at the fragments of the shadowy windowsills curling off into the room.

“ _That's the thing you need to understand, Erin. Not- not all of them were me_.”

“What?”

Erin strains to make out more of her friend in the shifting tide of the world around her, tries to understand Abby’s expression in the drifting patterns of smoke that make up her face.

“ _At first I didn’t realize that he was-_ ”

“He? He who?” Erin raises her arms toward Abby, intending to grab her shoulders or hands or _something_ to try to comfort her. Or comfort herself.

Erin isn’t quite sure anymore.

Because Abby is here― _really here―_ and maybe all their efforts haven't been in vain, maybe everything Erin’s ever known and loved isn’t slowly fading from the world after all and-

“ _Rowan._ ”

Abby says the name so softly that Erin barely makes it out. Even so, the air around them seems to shudder in the wake of it. Abby looks hurriedly around as the shudder grows and then passes. After a moment of returned calm they both let out a tense breath. Terror flows back into Erin’s chest with hungry voracity even after the world has once again gone still.

“Is that-?”

“ _That’s why I’ve had to be careful while trying to reach you guys on the other side. Once you open a door, anyone can walk through it._ ” The words send something icy slithering down Erin’s spine. Abby continues after a momentary pause of nothing but the omnipresent echoed whispers. “ _I_ _don’t think he’s fully... himself anymore. But there are- It’s hard to explain. Pieces, maybe? Fragments of him? They’re still here. And they’re_ angry.”

“Are we safe? Are- Are _you_ safe here?” Erin croaks out. Abby doesn’t acknowledge the questions, only continues on. Her voice is low and urgent and serious.

“ _It usually takes him a while to notice every time I managed to make contact across the veil. I think it’s because he’s so... splintered. But he always finds me soon enough._ ”

“I… I have a time limit here, then,” Erin states, understanding, and Abby nods. Smoke curls in waves at the motion.

“ _Like I said, not everything you might have seen was me. I would look for tiny holes or thinning places in the veil's fabric to reach you. But as soon as I managed to make contact, he would notice. And then he would notice the rips. And God, Erin, he goes at them with everything he has, then, trying to force his way through._ ”

Erin shudders.

“Is that why the incidents stopped happening so frequently?” Erin asks. Abby nods again.

“ _He can't find a way back. You thought he was dangerous before? He was_ human _then. This far removed from any scrap of humanity he_ did _have..._ ” She trails off, shaking her head, and meets Erin’s gaze with a terrified shudder that moves through her form in ripple-like waves. “ _He’s a_ monster, _now_. _And he wants to find a way back. To start all over again._ That’s _what I was trying to warn you about._ ”

“It’s okay! We can take stupid Rowan, don't worry. The priority here is to get you back home." Erin says emphatically. "We'll get you back home, Abby, I promise.”

But Abby is already stepping backwards away from Erin, shaking her head. Even the indistinct and constantly shifting nature of her Abby's features isn't enough to mask the pure horror that crosses them at Erin's words.

“ _No! No, you can’t risk it. It’s too dangerous. He might_ -”

Erin pushes off the railing to follow after her because seeing Abby retreating from her now feels like watching the portal closing in Times Square all over again.

And Erin’s not sure she can live through that a second time; she’s not sure she can live through the grief and the loss and slowly watching her family crumble like that a _second time_ -

“Abby- No, we can help you!”

But Abby is already turning away, her form flickering, the ash-gray smoke seeming to tug at the edges of her. Erin can’t manage to keep her sight focused on Abby and she grits her teeth in frustrated desperation. She blinks rapidly, trying to clear the blurring fuzz from her eyes, tries to follow the retreating flickers of Abby’s form.

“ _It’s too_ dangerous,  _Erin,_ _don’t you understand? You haven’t been here, you don’t know what he’s capable of!_ ” The words sound further and further away with each passing word.

“Abby-! Abby, please, don’t- We beat him before, we can do it again! Abby-!” Erin is stumbling across the swirling echo of the second floor, trying to keep a fix on Abby’s dispersing form as it begins to descend the stairs.

 _“It’s not the same, Erin! Don’t you get it? You can’t risk bringing something like him back to your side!_ ” Abby’s voice echoes, the frizzing edges encroaching even further upon the sound of her words. Erin tries not to let her heart register the words "your side" instead of "our side." “ _I_ _have to stay here_ _! You have to find all the holes and tears in the veil and seal them for_ good _! It's the only way!_ ”

“Abby! No- You-” Erin is gasping through clenched teeth, tears of desperation stinging in her eyes. “We- I can’t- _I can’t lose you again_!”

The way these words echo now is different. They ring, they pulse.

The air _shudders_ once more.

“ _He’s coming._ ” It’s Abby's voice then, hushed, and Erin isn’t sure she’s ever heard that level of terror ripping through her friend’s voice before. “ _Go!_ ”

And there are the suggestion of hands pushing at Erin’s back, at Erin’s neck, sparks beginning to spring once again to life around the corners of her vision. The shuddering air is now a steady pulse, a low booming wave that Erin feels down to her core.

“I’m not _leaving_ you here!” Erin hisses.

 _Don’t go, don’t go, I just found you again_ -!

“ _Erin!_ ” Abby’s voice is _close_ now―is right beside her ear―yet Erin can’t see her anywhere. The pain is back, needling sharp and bright just behind her eyes, and her vision is narrowing, and the terrifying deep thrumming is growing _louder_. “ _Go! Please!_ ”

There is nothing but the thundering, shuddering air and the bright firework sparks in her vision and Erin is calling Abby’s name over and _over_.

And then breath is flooding into her lungs as if she’s been underwater for far too long. The shuddering in the air is gone, replaced with the insistent beeping of multiple machines, the sounds of clanging metal and sparking wires, and clamoring voices she can’t yet making to words.

“Abby-! Abby, _Abby_ -!” She keeps calling Abby’s name like it is the last thing tethering her to reality.

“Erin! Erin, are you back with us?!”

Patty. That’s Patty’s voice, she realizes.

Her breath shudders into her lungs, and then out. There’s a crash of metal and a frustrated shout somewhere nearby.

“Holtzmann! What’s the hold up!?”

“I’m _trying-_! Gah!” There’s a pained sound and another crackling bang like something is shooting sparks. Holtzmann, Erin thinks. That’s Holtzmann. “It’s not _letting_ me shut it down-! The circuit’s completely disregarding any of my- _Shit!_ ”

Patty echoes the swear under her breath close by and Erin is aware of hands at her neck, her chin, her shoulders, hurriedly unbuckling and lifting an enormous weight from her.

“Patty...” Erin croaks. The sparks clouding her vision have faded but the room has not appeared in its wake. There’s nothing but a grey brightness around her, going momentarily darker when she blinks. “Patty, I-”

“Erin. Erin, it’s okay, we got you!” The words come in a rush of relief beside Erin’s ear. “Holtzy, Erin’s back!”

“Patty, what’s wrong? What’s going on-? I can’t-” Erin starts. Terror and the disorienting lack of sight is sending her thoughts zigzagging into fractured patterns. “I can’t _see_ -!”

“What?”

“Patty!” Holtzmann calls from somewhere far-off. “If Erin’s not in immediate danger of dying, I could _really_ use a hand here or _we_ might very well be!”

“Yeah! Yeah, I gotchyou!” Erin feels Patty’s hands at her back and elbow. “You’re gonna be okay, baby, you just gotta hang on for a bit. You okay? Grab the railing and stay here.”

Erin feels Patty grab her wrist and guide her hand to close around the second floor railing. Somewhere across the room, Holtzmann is cursing. Multiple alarms are signaling some sort of impending or current disaster.

“But I-” Erin sputters weakly but already Patty’s hands have retreated and amidst the chaos, Erin can hear Patty’s footsteps running across the room to help Holtzmann.

Erin breathes out through her mouth, willing herself not to panic. She squeezes the railing so hard that the iron ridge presses a painful line across the center of her palm. The pain momentarily helps ground her, pull her down into her body.

Her vision is still nothing but grey, still full of empty nothingness. And the sensation of helplessness, of _not knowing_ is shaking her to her bones.

Something―some device or piece of machinery―is vibrating in a halting stop-and-go under the strain of Holtzmann’s frantic attempts, causing the floor to shudder.

Oh _no_.

“Patty!” Erin calls, still clutching at the top bar of the railing. “Holtzmann! You need to shut down the connection _right now_!”

“What d’you think we’ve been _trying_ to do?!” Holtzmann hollers back. The shuddering continues. Erin can feel the tremors climbing up her legs, crawling along her arms from where her hands are connecting her to the railing.

“No! You don’t understand! It-!”

Just like before in front of the bleeding wall, a deep pulse vibrates through the air. It radiates outwards in a wave of sound, of energy, of _something_.

Erin blinks and just like that, the room is back in front of her, bright and chaotic and terrifying.

Bits of scorched metal litter the floor and sprays of sparks arc sporadically from multiple machines. Across the room at the heap equipment connected to the scrying bowl, Holtzmann has her goggles snapped into place over her eyes. She's holding one screwdriver in her mouth as she uses another to pull the back off a giant black box, the lights on which are flashing wildly. Patty is over beside the customized breaker system, attempting to flip off every single switch and unplug every piece of machinery she can reach.

In the center of it all, where Erin had been standing, the the metal bowl full of dark liquid still sits atop the table. Ripples pulse rhythmically through the water at steady intervals, unnaturally separate and eerily unaffected by all the clambering and jostling being done to the table it’s resting on.

Smoke begins to rise from the surface of the liquid.

No, not the surface, Erin realizes with horror, from _beneath_ the liquid itself. It curls sickeningly upwards through the contents of the bowl as if there was no matter there at all.

Erin remembers Abby’s voice, distant and fraying but so _close_ after so long as nothing but a memory _. "But as soon as I managed to make contact, he would notice. And then he would notice the rips," s_ he had said. _"And God, Erin, he goes at them with everything he has, then, trying to force his way through."_

“Shut it off!” Erin yells again, rushing over to Holtzmann’s side. “Shut it _off_!”

“We’re _tryi_ -!” Holtzmann begins to repeat through gritted teeth around the screwdriver handle.

“Something’s trying to come back through, Holtzmann! It’s using the scrying bo-!” Erin is cut off by the loud, terrifying crackle of electricity that has the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck standing on end. She tastes copper at the very back of her tongue.

The dark liquid within the scrying bowl shoots up into the air in a towering black fountain, still smoking and undulating with the pulsing energy, before splashing back down into the bowl with a loud crash. The liquid sprays everywhere with the force, and in its wake Erin can see a _hand_ grasping up from within the bowl’s depths.

Its fingers are long and spindly with some kind of dark slimy ooze webbing between the splayed and grasping digits. The skin is mottled black and dark green, rotted and over-saturated-looking; a corpse having floated too long undiscovered in a lake.

The hand _slams_ down onto the table. The force of it smacks the bowl onto its side with a clatter of metal as it begins to dig its flaking yellow nails into the wood, scraping along the surface with the spine-tingling high screech of nails on a chalkboard.

Erin is _horrified_ by her sudden understanding, nausea surging against the ceiling of her stomach.

“It’s trying to pull itself out!” Erin yells to Holtzmann and Patty who are frozen in place as, scrape by scrape, more of the long rotted green arm is dragged from the strange depths of the bowl. All of the previous dark liquid has long since been sloshed away and now Erin can see the metal bottom of the bowl is nothing but a mass of thick and undulating black smoke from which the arm extends.

Erin swallows against the bile rising in her throat. _Be strong. Hang on. Don't lose your grip. Don't lose them too._

“I got a blow torch!” Holtzmann calls, already halfway across the room toward the tool with eyes never leaving the unnerving and terrifying progress of the arm.

“No! Holtzmann, I need you to keep trying to cut off all the power to this thing. Patty? You got any handy knowledge about scrying bowls we could use right about now?”

Patty shakes herself and pulls in a breath.

“Scrying bowls, scrying bowls... uhh- I think maybe-? Yeah, yeah! We need a mirror!” she exclaims, already running toward Holtzmann’s tool rack, her eyes darting frantically around its contents.

“A mirror?” Erin repeats, rushing to join her. The continuing _scccreeeecch, scccreeeeecch_ of the... _thing’s_ nails as it drags itself further out of the darkness rakes across Erin’s mind.

“Or anything reflective,” Patty replies breathlessly, nodding as she riffles desperately through the workbench drawers. “Scyin’ works through reflections, ‘s how it opens connections between planes ‘n stuff. We reflect it back on its ugly self, we press that door back shut.”

“That’ll work?” Erin tries extremely hard not to let her voice tremble as she hurriedly joins Patty in her searching. _Hang on_. _Hang **on**_.

“Ha! No clue!” Patty replies. “But it’s as good a shot as any!” Erin nods and takes a steadying breath.

“Holtzmann, how’s the power coming?”

“Negativo, captain!” Holtzmann calls. “Seems like this thing is somehow bypassing the actual electrical grid at this point and is tapping into the ley line itself. Not much I can do from here. _Dammit!_ ” Holtzmann slams the screwdriver in her hand down onto the table.

“Found somethin’!” Patty exclaims, holding up a sheet of metal as she pulls it out from under a cabinet that has been shoved into the corner of the room.

It’s polished and smooth and Erin can see the room reflected back at her in its surface. It’s not an exact reflection; the details of the room are stretched and warped along the lines of the metal’s grain. Erin is eerily reminded of the smoky echo of the fire station she'd been standing in only minutes before.

“Go, go, go!” Holtzmann yells. “Get rid of that slimeball! It’s scratching up my work table!”

Patty dashes over to the main worktable where the arm has gouged deep thin lines of claw marks into the surface of the wood, upper arm steadily emerging from the black smoke within the metal bowl.

Patty hauls the sheet of metal up to face the arm and the sideways bowl, reflecting the blackness back onto itself.

“Get outta our house, you creepy-ass gremlin wannabe!”

The arm halts, mid motion. The bowl vibrates. The smoke begins swirling inwards.

The arm begins to spasm, twitching unnaturally as it flickers in and out of sight. The smoke swirls back onto itself towards the bottom of the bowl.

“Oh my God, it’s _working_!” Erin chokes out the words.

“Keep going, Patty, babe!” Holtzmann calls, beginning to once again flick switches and unplug cords. The arm begins thrashing atop the table as it slowly but surely is drawn backwards into the black smoke.

A high pitched ringing starts up in Erin’s ears and by the matching winces on Patty’s and Holtzmann’s faces they're hearing it too. It reaches it's crescendo, drowning out all other sound as the final tips of the creature’s fingers disappear back into the darkness and the smoke swirls around itself into a tighter and tighter knot until-

The ringing stops. The bowl rolls back upright once again, swaying slightly for a moment before stilling.

Patty cautiously lowers the sheet metal, which is smoking lightly. She’s panting as she looks over to Holtzmann who has her tongue sticking out between her teeth as she flips a final switch and the streetlight outside dies, washing the room in darkness.

Patty turns toward Erin, her chest heaving.

“Okay. Someone please tell me what the _hell_ just happened.”

Erin licks her lips and manages to grab the edge of the nearby workbench before her knees give out on her.

“It’s like Abby said,” she manages. Her voice sounds hoarse and small in comparison to the shuddering, raging fury they had just brushed up against the edges of. “It’s starting again.”

 

* * *

 

That night, the three of them check into a motel a few miles outside the city. No one speaks much.

Patty keeps letting out breathy, half-laughs into the silence seemingly at nothing. Holtzmann is uncharacteristically quiet, her eyes wide and distant behind her glasses, her nails ragged and chewed down to the beds.

Erin tosses and turns atop the sheets of the motel room bed for hours. Sleep continues to break over her momentarily before receding just as fast; a wave over sand. The lights of cars passing by on the interstate outside shine in slices through the window blinds, arcing with eerie smoothness across the darkened walls.

When she does sleep, she dreams of Abby.

Abby, tangible and pink-cheeked with life. Abby, back home with them where she was meant to be all along.

Abby, translucent and blurring in and out of focus. Abby, distant and terrified and telling Erin it’s too dangerous, Abby screaming in fear, shouting at her to _run, run, he’s right behind you,_ ** _Erin_** _-_!

Erin wakes in a jolt, jerked halfway to sitting by adrenaline and the gasp wrenching itself viciously from her lungs. She blinks rapidly to clear the blur from her eyes, finding her fingers bent into rigid curls and clawing at her own chest.

Breathing hard, she drops her hands to the bed beside her and flexes her fingers. Nightmare sweat has a sudden chill blooming around the back of her neck and at the small of her back.

The room somehow isn’t completely dark, although Erin can tell it’s still far before sunrise. In the far corner of the room beside one of the armchairs, the desk lamp casts out soft warm light. Upside down on the armchair, with legs bent at the knee over the top edge of the backrest and head hanging back off the edge of the cushion, Holtzmann is holding a book out in front of her face, quietly reading.

With her hair untied and in nothing but a sports bra, gym shorts, and the gentle warmth of the gold lamplight, Holtzmann looks younger than Erin has ever seen her.

Erin takes deep and deliberate breaths, watching the calm, easy rise and fall of Holtzmann’s bare stomach.

Erin wonders what Holtzmann was like at seventeen. At eighteen. At twenty-one. She wonders if she had been  _Holtzmann_ yet back then.

She wonders if Holtzmann has ever _not_ been Holtzmann.

Erin wonders if she had ever been young and scared and had believed it when the world told women like her and Abby and Patty that there was no place for them in it. She wonders if Holtzmann had ever been as tired as Erin had been at Columbia, had ever been as weak as Erin was, had ever simply given up trying to be what she was and had instead gone the easier route of being what everyone else preferred.

It's hard for her to imagine such a thing.

Holtzmann turns her head to meet Erin’s gaze, her hair loose and spilling down from her head to pool in a mass on the carpet below. From the pink tinge to her face, Erin guesses she’s been lying like that for a while now.

“How you holdin’ up, sport?” Holtzmann asks. Her voice is soft but her smile is crooked and warm, showing one of her canines, and the sight of it helps the remaining fear to drain from Erin’s fingertips.

Erin shakes her head and attempts a wobbly smile, surprised to realize her eyelashes are cold and wet where they meet her cheeks. She must have been crying in her sleep.

“‘m fine,” she rasps and clears her throat. In the next bed over Patty is asleep and snoring soundly with one arm bent up over her head and the other tossed out away from her atop the duvet. “Just a nightmare.”

Holtzmann makes a sound of understanding, of sympathy. She reaches her arms further out, her back arching to place her book down on the floor at the edges of her splayed hair.

“Yeah,” Holtzmann says. She brings her hands up to fold them atop her stomach and nods. Erin combs tangled hair away from her sweaty temples. “Yeah.” Holtzmann repeats it again, softer and lower, not looking back over at Erin.

Erin thinks Holtzmann has most likely always been Holtzmann in some form or another.

She can picture it, this younger Holtzmann in a sports bra and gym shorts and hair she never tied up. Erin can picture her lounging in a college dorm somewhere reading a textbook upside down like this on a futon, showing up to school dances in ill-fitting suit jackets and too-long ties. She can picture her being absent for classes and labs yet ingenious at any measure of comprehension or skills―nontraditional brilliance.

“Well I’m glad I didn’t wake you up, at least,” Erin says. Holtzmann laughs softly and her hands bounce slightly from the motion of her stomach muscles.

“You know me.” Holtzmann shrugs and Erin can’t help but smile at how ridiculous the gesture looks when performed upside down. “Never really been the eight-solid-hours type anyway.”

Holtzmann barely manages to finish the last sound before she’s overcome by a full-body yawn, the kind that flexes her wrists and straightens her knees, her legs stretching up into the air.

Erin smirks. “What was that you were saying?”

Holtzmann smacks her lips.

“No need to get wise with me, Gilbert.” She sighs before heaving her lower body up and over her torso, somersaulting backwards onto the carpet. Landing with a soft thud on her knees, Holtzmann whips upright in a flurry of wild golden hair, smiling with face still flush.

In the bed beside Erin’s, Patty shifts and Erin turns to watch with a fondness blooming in her chest as Patty sleepily rolls onto her side. She pulls a pillow to her and tangles her limbs around it like a cuddly octopus, sighing and muttering unintelligibly as she does so.

When Erin turns back to the lit corner of the room, Holtzmann is standing upright and swaying from side to side with a hand to her head.

“Dizzy?” Erin asks. Holtzmann laughs and shrugs. “Being upside down will do that to you.”

“You would know,” Holtzmann replies, flicking the light off without warming and padding over to the foot of Erin’s bed. Erin blinks in the darkness, Holtzmann now a slight black mass as she climbs up onto Erin’s bed, hair glinting faintly in the slivers of light slicing in from the parking lot beyond the blinds.

A noise of confused protest starts in Erin’s throat, but Holtzmann just shuffles over to the empty space beside Erin and plops herself down with a heavy finality.

“Now, c’mere. You aren’t supposed to spend nights like this alone.”

And then, just like that, Holtzmann’s arms are around her shoulders. The side of Erin’s head is pressed gently into the curve of Holtzmann's neck, to the line of her collarbone. She is warm and solid and Erin feels like she might cry.

She tries to clear her throat but when she speaks, her voice still comes out with ragged edges.

“Then why were you?” Erin asks.

Against Erin’s shoulder blades and curled around her waist, she feels the tremor of stiffness jolt through Holtzmann’s arms. Her fingers twitch against the curve of Erin’s skull where she’d lain her hand against Erin’s hair.

Holtzmann doesn’t laugh so much as Erin feels her chest lurch where she is pressed against it. Holtzmann exhales in a dismissive raspberry of a sigh and Erin wonders how Holtzmann managed not to get any spit onto her.

Holtzmann doesn’t reply. Instead, she takes to shimmying around in order to lay back against the sheets, her unrelenting embrace guiding Erin as well until they’re both beneath the covers.

She is so _tired_. Always so tired. Exhaustion and grief and fear hang heavy from her shoulders and pull like weights at her eyelids. Erin lets her eyes drift shut to the feeling of Holtzmann’s hand softly sliding along her hair.

“Were you dreaming about Abby?” Holtzmann’s voice is barely above a whisper when it does come minutes later, startling Erin out of a pre-sleep lull. Erin exhales.

“Yeah. Did you? Earlier, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

“Was yours a nightmare too?”

Holtzmann’s chest jerks beneath Erin’s cheek again. “Sorta.”

“Mm.” Erin nods, understanding.

Against the backs of her closed eyelids, Erin can see her there: Abby so spectral and hollow-looking and resigned to it. To staying in that empty shadow of the world forever.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” The question is out of Erin before she knows she’s asking it, rushed and desperate and sounding so pathetic to her own ears.

“For not just agreeing to leave her like she asked you?” Holtzmann asks. Erin nods. “Yeah.”

Erin pushes herself up on one elbow so she can punch Holtzmann softly in the ribs.

“ _Ow_ , hey!” Holtzmann exclaims.

“You said you-” Erin starts to protest, but Holtzmann cuts her off.

“Hey, hey! I never said that was a _bad_ thing, Gilberino. I do stupid shit all the time! Being stupid is a hell of a useful trait now and again. I put it under the "Skills" section on my resume.”

Erin snorts and settles back down against the warmth and solidity of Holtzmann’s body.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“You don’t even have a resume. I asked Abby if she had one of yours for our records once. You know what she gave me? A piece of notebook paper with “HELL YEAH!" written in red pen, bordered by a circle of gold star stickers.”

Holtzmann snorts a laugh.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. I mean, don't blame Abby; that _is_ what I gave her when I applied.”

“Oh my God, how are you still alive?”

Beneath Erin’s cheek, Holtzmann shrugs.

“I've mastered the art of the educated guess,” she replies. “That, and a witch once blessed me with eternal luck because I fixed her transmission for cheap.”

Erin just groans and Holtzmann snickers.

Erin can feel the vibrations of it through Holtzmann’s skin and it has something rushing up through her chest and behind her eyes in a surge she isn’t expecting. Erin blinks rapidly against the feeling.

“And I guess maybe,” Holtzmann adds, so softly that it barely comes out with any voice beneath the breath, “having the best friends anyone could ask for might have a little something to do with it.”

Erin swallows down the sob creeping up from her chest. She had had to fight it down all day, over and over―the fear, the terror, the desperation, the despair. _Hang on, hang on._ But here in the dark, with Patty asleep and safe nearby and the warmth of Holtzmann's honesty beneath her fingertips and pressed against her legs, she doesn't want to be strong.

She wants to be enough. That's all she's ever wanted. And she can't be―won't ever be. And Erin is terrified that will be the death of them some day.

She tightens her arms around Holtzmann’s waist and hates the tear she can’t keep from sliding down her cheek despite squeezing her eyes shut as tightly as she can. She hates that she’s crying and she hates that she’s so scared for tomorrow. She hates how unsure she is of the plan they’d devised earlier that evening and she hates how much of its success tomorrow will depend on her.

She hates how much she misses Abby. She hates how far she knows she's willing to go and how much she knows she's willing to sacrifice to get her back.

She hates how much she loves them all, how much she _needs_ them all and she hates how fucking much it hurts to love and need so deeply.

Holtzmann doesn’t say anything as Erin cries silent tears, a steady series of drips that begin to pool at the place where her cheek meets Holtzmann’s shoulder. She doesn’t say anything as Erin bites her lip and trembles quietly in her arms.

She doesn’t say anything, just holds Erin tighter.

Erin hates how much she never understood it before this. God, how many nights has Erin not been there? She hates that she doesn't know how many nights Holtzmann shouldn’t have had to spend alone but did.

Erin hates loneliness for the indiscriminate and immortal shadow that it casts over her and over everyone she loves.

There are so, _so_ many things that Erin admires about her friends: Holtzmann’s unrepentant expression and nontraditional brilliance, Patty’s unwavering self-confidence and courage, Abby’s determination and loyalty to herself. And she hates that even these things cannot keep loneliness at bay every time it creeps into dark rooms and silent moments.

She hates that loneliness is a creature that can exist despite logic; she hates that even here with Holtzmann's arms around her and with Patty nearby, even now, loneliness―relentless and clever―is hollowing out a space for itself to curl up inside of Erin's chest.

These are the kinds of specters, Erin knows, that even the four of them can never truly be rid of.

Erin sinks toward sleep to the soft sounds of Patty’s steady snoring just a few feet away. She finally drifts off with damp cheeks pressed against Holtzmann’s damp shoulder and with the approaching threat and possible disaster of tomorrow looming in the shadows overhead.

Erin dreams of the shadowy echo of the fire station and things there that move out of the corner of her eyes.

She dreams of her own hands changing before her very eyes, growing long and jagged nails that move against her will, that gouge deep gashes into her own arms.

She dreams of dizzying red blood pouring from white walls. She dreams that, despite there being no apparent wound, that same sickening bright blood blooms up through the skin above her heart and pours down her chest and stomach.

Erin dreams of ash-grey figures that look like people she recognizes. People she loves. She dreams that sometimes, when she focuses hard enough on a specter’s shifting image, it's _her own_ face that emerges from the fog.

Erin dreams of Abby, in some dark place all by herself. Alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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>   
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